foster to adopt – Oh Lord Help Us

About this time last year I shared with you our desire to adopt from the foster care system. If you haven’t read about that and would like to learn what brought us to the decision, please do so. It can be found here.

Quite a bit has happened in the past year. I decided to start homeschooling my oldest, and I had a baby girl. But not a whole lot has happened with the adoption process. Last spring we had our Fire Marshal inspection and the Health Department inspection and then had to wait for the home study portion to be done. So we waited. And waited. The wait was long but I had peace within the waiting. I was getting ready to have a baby, so no real rush. And so we waited some more. I was warned early on that this was a long process. They weren’t lying.

Last week, we finally had the first half of our home study done. Hallelujah! This visit was just with the kids and I. Here are some highlights from the visit.

Leading up to the visit, I was quite nervous. Not so much that we wouldn’t get approved, but the fact that this person coming into our home is evaluating us (which feels like judgement) and they have so much power over the future of our family. I felt very vulnerable, indeed. Which is probably why the night before I had trouble sleeping and had bad dreams. In my dream it was my yoga instructor that came to do the home study. Odd. I like my yoga instructor, but it’s not like we are close. Anyway, she comes to the house where we apparently had a wild party the night before that got out of hand. There were people passed out drunk, and panties. Panties were strewn everywhere! Oh the horror! I’m trying to explain to her that this is not how we really live, and so on and so on. I was relieved to wake up to my clean non-party house.

Now back in reality, the lady was quite pleasant. She was very southern, and very sarcastic. I liked her very much. She was talking to the boys, asking them about their lives, and what kind of things they like to do. My boys have no trouble talking to people that come over. The trouble is getting them to stop. And my oldest is such a schmoozer. When she asked what he thought about his mom (me), he responded with, “Beautiful, heartwarming, silly, and crazy.” Sweet kid. And in regards to what he thinks about his dad, he answered, “SUPER strong!!” It’s nice to know what our kids think of us.

During the conversation, I left to get baby girl up from her nap. When I brought her out, the lady asked, “She isn’t yours, is she?” Ummm…. DSS had not informed her of the change in our family. See, when we submitted our initial application, I was not even pregnant. Now I have a six month old. Yes, it is a long, long road.

After the questions about my childhood, and my relationship with my family currently, she was asking what we were willing to take on. On our initial application we said we would take a sibling group of two. I told her we were now willing to take up to three if it was the right fit. She looks at me and asked, “Do I need to submit you for a psych eval?” Well, maybe.

The interview was coming to a close. We had survived. She was packing up and heading out the door. As soon as the door closed, and I mean it barely latched, my ~~punk~~ precious 4 year old says (quite loudly), “Look at her big butt!” Oh no, oh no, oh no no no!!!! So close. So close at getting through this without feeling horror. I don’t know if she heard or not, but I was completely embarrassed!

And now we are back to waiting. The second part of the home study will be done this week with my husband. The next step is to wait for a placement. Will it be this summer? Six months? A year? Only the Lord knows. In the meantime, I pray. I pray for protection for these future children of ours, they need it. Their lives are at stake. Literally.

Now, back to that dream I had. I told my yoga instructor about it, thinking she would get a kick out of it. She looked at me with a look that was part amused, part confused, part serious, and said, “I was a social worker for 30 years. Doing home studies was part of what I did.”

Creepy.

When I started this series I had in mind what I wanted to say for this final post. But over the past two weeks I have struggled to know how much to share, and unsure if I will be able to express the main point. But here it goes, wish me luck.

Once we moved to South Carolina life was good. I finally felt like I understood what it meant to be living life abundantly (John 10:10). I was finally able to be a stay-at-home mom to our wonderful two boys. I was able to run and bike and swim on a regular basis. I was making wonderful new friends. I was learning and investing at our church. Good, good stuff. Then one Sunday we went to church and life suddenly became very complicated.

Our church was doing a sermon series about the fact that our lives are worship, and all lives have value. From the unborn to the elderly, life is to be cherished. There was a video that was shown that had clips from South Korea showing these box-like things (think big blue post office mailbox) where women could put their unwanted babies. Now, this sounds crude, but we actually provide the same (needed) service here in America. Women can take their unwanted babies, no questions asked, to a hospital, or fire station, or police station. But something about this video shattered my heart. On the way home my husband asks the question, “Soooo, what are you thinking?” I shocked him with, “I think we need to adopt.” That is where this journey began a little over a year ago.

I had never, NEVER, had an interest in adoption. I thought it was a great thing; for other people, that is. But not for us. We were happy to be done with having kids. Ready to move on and have new adventures with our two great guys. Alas, that was not the case. So we talked about international adoption. We have several friends who have done this and I think it’s great, but that wasn’t what we felt was right for us. We talked about domestic adoption. But I felt like, if we wanted another baby we would have another baby. So we talked about fostering. But we thought that would be too hard on our children that get attatched to people so easily. We settled on adopting a young child (or children) that was currently in the foster system. This is known as fostering to adopt, and we are currently working with DSS.

This decision was by no means decided on lightly. First we went to an informational meeting at our church for people interested in adoption. In the class, we were the only ones that went to get information. Everyone else had already adopted and were there to provide support. It was as if there was a panel set up just for us to ask questions. There was a family that adopted a baby from China. A family that adopted a four year old from Belarus. A lady that went through a domestic adoption, as well as fostering other children. All of them had biological children first. Then we spent 3 months just talking about it among ourselves and with The Lord. After that I finally got the courage to call an agency to get the process started. We ended up deciding not to work with this agency, but I will never forget what this lady told me. She said, “now that you have made this decision you are going to start to meet random people that have done foster to adopt, and that is just The Lord providing encouragement for you along this journey.” Oooooo-kaaaaay, I thought, that’s weird. Well sure enough, three days later at my sons tennis class, there was a new mom there and she was telling me about her son. “He’s adopted” she said. I responded with, “really? I would love to hear your story if you don’t mind sharing.” “Not at all” she said, “well, we did foster to adopt.” Of course they did!! I just started laughing and explained to her that we were considering to do that as well. Since then I have indeed met several people who had walked this road before us, some of which have become instrumental to us by encouraging and praying for us on a regular basis.

During this decision making process, something else happened. We got the baby bug which resulted in me getting pregnant which resulted in miscarriage. I was angry, and sad, and all those emotions that come with the loss of life, but it was alright. We decided that it was time to move ahead with the adoption process. So the application was filled out, and sent in. It was the craziest feeling. It truly felt like I had just gotten a positive pregnancy test. I was excited, and ~~scared~~ terrified, and just hoping that it would “stick”. And then I started to love. Just like an expecting mother loves the baby in her womb even though she doesn’t know him/her, I started to love this child/children that are out there. And that love has developed into a yearning to meet them and know them and pour our love into them.

So we went to orientation, got fingerprinted, filled out the ridiculously difficult application, and are currently going through training. This process has changed and is changing us. It has changed how I see my relationship with The Lord.

How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message

It has changed me as a mother. Learning to be patient, and give grace to these little people that God has placed in my care. And finally, I have been learning how to surrender. To give up this idea I have of living a simple, stress-free, I-don’t-want-to-be-bothered kind of life. I want to live a life that has purpose. Two years ago I could not have even considered doing this. My soul was depleted. I was struggling to keep my head above the water, and I felt like I was suffocating. Over the past year and a half, The Lord has filled my cup overflowing, and He has given us such an awesome desire to serve Him by loving and serving His little children. He has led me to “where my trust is without borders.”

Oh, and I’m 14 weeks pregnant.

This is the 4th and final post on a series about Faith, Trust, Surrender.